Research interests

About

I am passionate about science and technology, in particular about the kind that has a positive direct impact in improving people's well-being and their opportunities of participation in society. I like to research, design and implement experiences that bring people together, fostering social interactions and facilitating participation within the community. I see technology as a tool that can support these experiences, but I believe people must be at the center of our design processes, having always a careful attention upon their expectations and their particular ways of appropriating and using technology, which are not always the ones we foresee at the beginning of our work. Constant change is a part of the process, and when working to design solutions for people, I think we must consider with high regard their own opinions and views about it. To sum up the principles that drive me in my works, I like the way the internet has somehow paraphrased the words of Carl Jung: "You can learn out all the theories, master all the techniques, but when you touch a human soul, you have to be just another human soul".
I got an Informatics Engineering degree from the National University of Asunción (Paraguay) in 2009, and a Ph.D. in Information and Communication Technologies from the University of Trento (Italy) in 2014.
Recently, the focus of my work has been in the multidisciplinary realm of Social-Community Informatics and Human Computer Interactions, using Participatory Design and Participatory Action Research as my principal approaches to the study and design of interactive systems that improve people's health and well-being.
In my years of professional research and work, I have had experience working with a myriad of topics, including mainly the following: User experience and HCI research, qualitative research methods, participatory design, participatory action research, web engineering, service oriented computing (particularly RESTful based service platforms), data and knowledge management, mobile applications design and implementation.
I am currently working as a Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Trento, Italy. Here, my work is divided in two streams of work that might seem unrelated, but are ultimately well connected. Half of my time is devoted to working in the study and design of ICT for active ageing. The other half is devoted to online education of ICT for health and well-being.